No it's not sunny Weymouth by the sea...:-) This peaceful scene is Lagos in Portugal, taken on holiday earlier this year. How lucky we were to be able to go! Thanks to the kindness and generosity of my daughter and her partner, my other autistic daughter and I had a blissful week in the sun... We will never forget it. I have never been to Weymouth. I expect it's perfectly lovely - even if they don't have broadband... My mother knew it well. She used to make regular visits to see her friend Miss Brown. She would catch the train from Victoria Station in London and would be gone all day.My mother loved the sea. She was born in Gosport, Hampshire, and as a small child she would watch the ships come in and out of Portsmouth Harbour, dreaming of foreign lands and strange peoples beyond the blue horizon. It was exciting, she said, just to imagine where those ships had been and what they had seen. She was born into a very different England to the one we know now. In her time, there was no chance of travel for a little girl with no mother and an alcoholic father. They were so poor, one day she came home from school to find all there was to eat was a single egg. My mother would do her homework in the pub, playing dominos with the old men, while her father tried to drink away his sorrow. His beautiful wife, my mum's beloved mother, had died running to catch a tram. She had lost her step and fallen. The baby she was carrying died too. My mother was such an inspiration to me. She never complained. She had a heart as big as the sea itself, and never lost her childlike sense of awe at the wonder of this beautiful planet. Towards the end of her life, we went to Hope Cove in South Devon -the place where we had so many happy family holidays. We walked down to the beach and looked out across the blue horizon - just my mum and me. It was one of those moments you hold in your heart forever - lucky me.